


Light a match, stand back

by MirandaTam



Series: Rebuilding from the ground up [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Depression, Earthbending & Earthbenders, Gen, Korra Needs a Hug, Or maybe just a really stubborn earthbending teacher, Post-Season/Series 03, Spirit World, Spiritual Journeys, Toph Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-18 21:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2362925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirandaTam/pseuds/MirandaTam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I want you to stop moping around and go do something you should have done a long time ago,” Katara says calmly. “You’re going to change clothes. I’ve brought some nice Earth-style ones.”</p><p>“What?” Korra asks. “Why? I’m – we’re – Water Tribe.”</p><p>“Yes,” Katara says patiently, “We are. But everybody knows that the Avatar is water tribe. So you’re going to put on these non-Water Tribe clothes, put your hair up differently, and go wander the world incognito.”</p><p>Korra stares at her for a long moment.</p><p>“You’re sick, Korra,” Katara tells her. “Not just in your body, but in your mind. You’ve only seen what the world thinks of the Avatar, and most of that when it’s negative opinion. You’re going to travel the world and see what it thinks of Korra.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light a match, stand back

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Script's _Superheroes_.

_Maybe I should have just lost my bending,_ she thinks.

_Maybe Amon was right,_ she thinks.

 _Zahir should have just killed me,_ she thinks.

(the one thing she refuses to regret is defeating Unalaq and Vatu; that wasn’t just about her, it was about her friends, her family, her _world_.)

 _I should just give up now,_ she decides.

_The next Avatar will be much less of a fuckup than I am._

_It’s for the best._

“Get up,” Katara says.

Korra blinks.

“You heard me,” Katara says. “Get up. Your muscles are still weak, but I know you’ve been practicing. So get up, or so help me I will make you.”

Korra gets up. “What do you want,” she mumbles.

“I want you to stop moping around and go do something you should have done a long time ago,” Katara says calmly. “You’re going to change clothes. I’ve brought some nice Earth-style ones.”

“What?” Korra asks. “Why? I’m – we’re – Water Tribe.”

“Yes,” Katara says patiently, “We are. But everybody knows that the Avatar is water tribe. So you’re going to put on these non-Water Tribe clothes, put your hair up differently, and go wander the world incognito.”

Korra stares at her for a long moment.

“You’re sick, Korra,” Katara tells her. “Not just in your body, but in your mind. You’ve only seen what the world thinks of the Avatar, and most of that when it’s negative opinion. You’re going to travel the world and see what it thinks of Korra.” She pauses. “You might want to think up a pseudonym, though – call yourself Suki, or come up with another one. Go change.”

Katara shoves a bundle of clothes at her. Korra looks down at them, not quite comprehending the pale browns and greens.

“Korra,” Katara says patiently. “Go.”

 

 

Leaving Naga behind hurts the most.

Katara promised she’d look after her, but… it still hurts, seeing her stand there on the dock, thumping her tail and whining gently.

“I’ll be back, girl,” she whispers. “I just have to find some things first.”

Leaving everyone else behind is easy by comparison.

“I’ll tell them where you’ve gone,” Katara assures her. “Well, not exactly _where_. You’ll find your own path. But I’ll make sure they don’t worry.”

A motorboat takes her to the edges of Republic City, where there’s a ostrich-horse and a pack waiting for her.

Everything feels a little bit like a dream, she decides. That’s why she’s not… panicking, or freaking out. This is the second time she’s run away, aided and abetted by Katara. The first time had been happier than this, more joyous. She was going to Republic City, to see the wonders of the modern world and learn airbending from Tenzin. Now, she was running from all of that – from all her responsibilities, from everyone who looked at her with sad eyes and pity in their smiles. She was running away to be alone, to travel the world by herself–

To travel the world.

She was running away to _travel the world_.

“I’m going,” Korra whispers to herself. “I’m… I’m _going_.”

This was what she’d dreamed of since the White Lotus had decided she needed to stay cooped up in the south.

She laughed a bit, suddenly, and it was good that she was already mostly out of the city, away from people who would stare at a woman crazily laughing out of nowhere.

“Come on,” she whispered to the ostrich-horse. “Let’s run.”

 

 

She heads north for no real reason, walking when she can and riding on Wan when she gets too tired.

(Yes, she named her ostrich-horse after the first avatar. It’s not like there’s anyone who knows to tell her off for it.)

Sometimes she spends Katara’s money and sleeps in inns in the villages she passes through. Sometimes she makes a tent. Sometimes she just sleeps under the stars.

It’s in the third village she passes through when an old woman looks at her and sighs. “You know, dearie,” she says, “However you got hurt, you won’t get better if you don’t work for it. You look underfed – children these days never eat enough healthy food. Come help me out around the house, and rest the night.”

“I’m not too good with chores,” Korra admits.

“It’s all right,” the woman says. “I’ll teach you. I’m in it for the company, not the work; I miss my grandchildren.”

“All right,” Korra says before she’s really thought it through. “I’m… you can call me Suki.”

“I’m Meng,” the woman says. “Here, help me with the rest of my shopping, will you?”

Korra smiles and accepts the heavy basket that Meng hands out to her.

They walk through the market, Meng explaining to Korra how to pick out the best food.

“I’ve never really gotten my food from a market before,” Korra says. “It seems… tedious, I guess.”

“You city kids,” Meng says. “I buy my food here every day or two. I know everybody who I buy from. And I know how to get the best deal,” she finishes, winking at a fruit seller, who laughs and shakes his head.

Meng talks Korra through how to make their dinner. She’s funny, especially for an older person, and Korra finds herself laughing more than once.

As they’re sitting down to eat, there’s a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” Meng calls out. “Please, come in!”

A woman sticks her head in. “Meng, I heard– Oh, you’re still here?”

Korra blinks in surprise. “Who, me?”

“Huh.” The woman clearly wasn’t expecting this. “Yeah, you.”

Meng is frowning. “Omi, you don’t have to keep checking on me.”

“Why wouldn’t I still be here?” Korra demands.

Omi raises an eyebrow. “You must not get out a lot, kid. The last few times Meng invited a random traveler over, they’d robbed her and taken off by now. She hasn’t really adapted to modern times yet,” she adds, speaking more directly to Meng. “People aren’t as trustworthy as they used to be.”

“Maybe I like to believe that they will be,” Meng snaps back. “Suki’s not rude. Go home, Omi.”

Korra looks down at her plate. “People really did that to you?” she asks.

Meng shrugs. “I’m not going to stop looking for company because a few rude people do not appreciate it,” she says, but she’s quiet for the rest of the evening.

Korra helps her tidy up the next morning.

“Where are you going?” Meng asks her as they make breakfast.

“I’m… not sure,” Korra says. “I was just sort of… wandering.”

Meng nods knowingly. “I understand wanting to see the world while you’re still young enough to enjoy it. Have you ever been to Omashu?”

“No, I haven’t,” Korra says. “Have you?”

“Only once,” Meng says, chuckling. “It was amazing. I bet it would be even more amazing for a young earthbender.”

“I bet it would be,” Korra muses.

Meng helps her wrap up a cold lunch for her journey. “I hope you find whatever you’re looking for,” Meng tells her.

“Thanks,” Korra says, grinning. “Did you ever find the man with big ears?”

“Yes, I did,” Meng says after a minute, looking at Korra more closely. “But if you’re looking for romantic advice, you’ll have to go somewhere else – I went through my share of blunders.”

“No, I was just… wondering, I guess.” Korra pauses for a moment, and then reaches over to hug the old woman. “Thank you for letting me stay with you.”

“It was a pleasure,” Meng assures her. “If you’re ever back in town, stop by.”

“I will.”

Korra stares up at the volcano as she rides away from the town, quelling the urge to go check that it was dormant. They had people go and check every month. It wasn’t as if they relied on the clouds to tell them, or anything.

She shudders, rides on, and definitely does not have nightmares about lava.

 

 

Korra heads eastwards, overland, rather than catching a boat. She doesn’t want to go back to Republic City, not yet, and all the ships stop there before heading on to Omashu. It’s a long journey, but it gives her time to think.

_People aren’t as trustworthy as they used to be._

Aang had travelled the world, relying on himself, his friends, and the kindness of strangers.

But Omi had implied – hell, Korra had seen for herself, in Republic City – that most of the time, strangers were _assholes_.

So what did that mean?

She gets to Gaipan Village, visits the now-tourist-attractionified Tree Hideout, and can’t climb the trees. There’s not enough strength in her arms – in her legs – in her breath, when she looks around and sees green up and down and thinks _crystal cave, red lotus_ and very nearly has a panic attack all the way into the Avatar State.

She leaves Gaipan.

Wan keeps grunting at her, sounding as worried as an ostrich-horse can sound.

“Shut up, I’m fine,” she lies.

He looks at her, clearly unimpressed.

“Let’s just move on,” She tells him. “Let’s go. Somewhere… not green.”

They go to the Great Divide, and Korra is truly breathless for the first time in a while.

“It’s so… _big,_ ” she tells Wan. “It just stretches into _forever_. Wow.”

She gets rid of all of her food before going down into the canyon – she’s not an _idiot_ – and makes sure that she has the way to the other side memorized. (Yay, mass production of accurate maps!)

The canyon floor is as amazing as the top of the canyon – she can’t see as far, but she’s surrounded on all sides by striped orange rock, reaching up into the sky.

And then she’s surrounded by canyon crawlers.

_Damn it, fate._

She doesn’t even think, just starts earthbending – _no fire, water, or air, you want to be you, not the Avatar_ – well, earthbending and running. The wall up to the edge of the canyon is too far away, there are too many canyon crawlers, life is officially _completely awful_ –

She shoots up through the air on a spire of smooth dirt, so sheer that even the crawlers can’t climb it. And the crawlers themselves are disappearing, getting sucked down into the earth or just plain running away.

Korra holds Wan steady and waits.

Once all the canyon crawlers are gone, the spire lowers back down into the earth, bringing Korra with it.

Her savior is an old woman, wearing clothes the color of the canyon’s walls accented with bright green.

“Your earthbending is complete shit,” the woman says. “Who are you, and why didn’t you wait for a guide?”

“I thought I could handle it,” Korra says, the weight of the situation crashing down on her. _Shit._ She thought she could handle it, just like everything else.

The woman sighs. “Of course you did. And what should I call you?”

“You can call me Suki,” Korra says.

The woman stares at her for a minute. “Damn,” she says finally. “That was what I was going to say.”

“What?”

“Wait, give me a minute, I can think up another name.” The woman starts muttering to herself, listing off names and discarding them almost as fast. “Haru? Boy’s name. Kya? No, that’s taken. Ty lee? Hell no.”

“You can be Suki if you want,” Korra offers, but the woman ignores her.

“Call me Mai,” the woman finally decides.

“Okay.” Korra pauses for a moment. “Why Mai?”

“She was just enough of an asshole that we could tolerate each other comfortably,” The woman… _Mai_ … says cheerfully. “So. Suki, or whatever. You suck at earthbending. I – hah – I _rock_ at earthbending.”

“You want to teach me,” Korra says skeptically. “Why?”

“I’m bored?” Mai shrugs. “You seem like you could do with some help.”

“I can manage on my own,” Korra snaps.

“Which is why you’re about to fall over,” Mai agrees.

 _Damn it_. Korra holds on very tighty to Wan, and resolutely does _not_ fall over.

“Come on,” Mai says. “Come back to my place, sit down for a bit, I’ll make you some tea or some shit. We can figure out the rest from there.”

Korra breathes very slowly, does not fall over, and thinks about Mai’s offer.

_See what the world thinks of Korra._

_You look like you could do with some help._

“Okay,” she says.

 

 

“Open the door,” Mai says.

Korra punches through the door.

“No, you idiot,” Mai says, reforming the door. “I said _open_ it, not break it. Yeesh. You’re worse than my first student – hell, you’re worse than I was.”

“You were worse than your first student?” Korra asks, trying to puzzle out that last sentence.

“Oh, I was better at earthbending than him, all the way,” Mai says, “But he was an idiot. I was a bit of an idiot back then too, but at least I was _good_ at my brand of idiocy. He was just an idiot.”

“I’m not–” Korra takes a deep breath. If there’s one thing she’s learned over the few days she’s spent with Mai so far, it’s that even Korra can’t out-yell her if they really get into it. “How do I stop being an idiot, then?”

Mai grins brightly. “I thought you’d never ask.” She steps forwards takes a stance opposite Korra, bringing her arms down low. “Earthbending – any sort of bending – isn’t just punching things. You want to take your enemies down, yeah? But you want to take them down so damn hard that they can’t get back up. So you’ve got to be creative, and hit them where they’re least expecting it.” She brings her arms up high, taking a bunch of loose rocks and dirt with them. “People never believe me when I tell them that earthbending is the most versatile of all the bending types.”

“It’s earth,” Korra points out. “How can it be versatile?”

Mai flicks a pebble at her. “Shut up, I’m giving a speech.” She starts rotating her arms slowly, bringing the loose pebbles and dirt with them, gathering speed. “Sandbending took me the longest. It’s sort of like airbending, a little bit; sand works best in circles.” Mai releases the disk of sand that she’s gathered up, sending it spinning off into the distance.

It shears off a column of canyon rock.

“Straight earthbending is solid, calm. You find your center, you _do not move from your spot_. You stand your ground, and don’t concede any ground to your enemy.” Mai takes another stance, bringing up boulders as her feet brace against the ground. “This does not mean that you hit things head-on. Shield.”

Korra summons a wall of solid rock in front of her.

Mai tosses her boulders at Korra’s shield for a sold half-minute. “Bring it down. Pretty stupid of me, right? There’s no way I was going to get through your shield with what I had. Do it again.”

Korra brings it up again, quietly sighing at the repetition–

A clod of dirt hits the back of her head.

“Ow!” she yelps. “Hey!”

Mai cackles as Korra’s wall comes down. “You see what I did?”

“You cheated,” Korra grumbles.

“Bullshit I cheated,” Mai argues. “It’s not my fault if you didn’t shield all the way, or didn’t watch out behind you.”

“We don’t all have eyes in the back of our head,” Korra retorts.

Mai smirks, but doesn’t reply. “Lavabending,” she says instead, and Korra freezes up. “I don’t know what you have against it, but clearly it freaks you the fuck out. So. We’re going to teach you how to do it.”

“Do I have to?” Korra pleads.

“Yes.” Mai stares her down.

Korra averts her eyes. Something made it hard to look into the old woman’s tinted glasses.

“Lavabending,” Mai says again. “It’s, like, this weird combination between earthbending, firebending, and waterbending.”

“ _Waterbending_? That doesn’t even make any sense,” Korra snaps, her nerves practically exploding. “Fire, sure, earth, yeah. But there’s no water involved.” Korra is protective of water. Water is _hers_.

“Really,” Mai says flatly, and drops into another bending stance.

The rock to either side of her glows and starts to melt, and Korra trips over her own feet and lands on her ass in her attempt to _get the fuck away from the freaking lava_.

The lava swirls around, and Korra sees the Northern Air Temple, Bolin and Mako and Tenzin, and the Crystal Cave melting with Gazan still in it and she knows she wasn’t there but it still _happened_ and – and–

And is that a _waterbending_ stance?

Mai is moving like a waterbender, chi flowing through her body as the lava swirls around.

“Are you done freaking out?” she asks once she realizes that Korra is paying attention. “Lava is just liquid rock. Water is liquid… well, water. If you’ve seen any waterbenders use ice, it’s similar to earthbending, too, but it’s easier to show with this.” She brings her arms around and down slowly, cooling the lava and releasing the now-hard rock to the ground. “Lavabending was probably the hardest for me to learn.”

“I thought you said sandbending was the hardest,” Korra says, grasping for straws to just get Mai to stop talking about lava. It was cool, sure, she’s not going to stop freaking out just like that.

“Sandbending took me the longest,” Mai corrects her. “Lavabending was the hardest, because I’m a metalbender by nature. Metal–” she takes the opportunity to summon a chunk of iron “–Is all about… not quite anger, but force of will. You decide that the metal _will_ move, and it _moves._ ” She slowly drops the chunk to the floor. “Lavabending has nothing to do with anger. It can be used angrily, like anything else, but its base isn’t anger. Its base is… not acceptance, or resignedness, but something like that. When you’re out of options and you’re tired of fighting and you just want to collapse, so you collapse and the rock collapses with you.” Mai grins. “I don’t really do that sort of thing.”

Korra… actually sort of gets it. “It’s like metalbending is… when something is put under lots of stress. Metalbending is pushing back, instead of shattering, and lavabending is… _bending_.”

“Exactly,” Mai says quietly. “You said you’ve metalbent before. Try it now.”

Korra stares at the iron sitting in front of her.

And keeps staring at it.

“I’m tired,” she says, when she’s done staring.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Mai says.

 

 

“Why do you wear those glasses?” Korra asks.

“Hm?” Mai looks up from her breakfast. “What, these? My eyes aren’t exactly super good. Too much light, and I can’t see anything.”

“Okay.” Korra thinks for a moment. Old woman, powerful earthbender, bad eyesight…

 _Really_ bad eyesight…

“So!” Mai claps her hands. “I have an idea.”

Korra groans. “What are we doing this time?”

Mai grins. “We’re going to go on a spirit journey.”

“That is _such a bad idea,_ ” Korra says. “Do you even know how to go on a spirit journey?”

“Of course I do,” Mai says. “I was friends with this dude who went on spiritual journes all the time.”

“You’re Toph Beifong, aren’t you,” Korra says.

“Of course I am,” says the inventor of metalbending, the most powerful earthbender in the past hundred years, and the close friend and teacher of Avatar Aang. “Did it seriously take you that long? Don’t answer that.” Mai – _Toph_ – stands and starts cleaning up, bending stone bowls back into the table. “Anyway, you had the earthbending basics down pretty well, so I just needed to help you get a better mindset. Now you need to do th same with the other elements So we’re going to go to the spirit world to talk with Iroh.”

“Oh,” Korra says. “You, uh. Know about that.”

“Yep,” Toph says cheerfully. “Now, you know what your issues are – you’ve got to work on your lavabending issues, and work up your confidence so that you can metalbend again. Who taught you that, Lin?”

“Suyin,” Korra answers, still sort of bewildered by the abrupt revelations.

Toph sighs. “Typical. Anyways, I’m going to teach you how to see with your feet before you go, but we can do that as we go.”

“So… where are we going to meditate, then?” Korra asks. “And what’s _typical_ about Suyin teaching me?”

“There’s a shrine out in the middle of the canyon,” Toph says, ignoring Korra’s other question. “Come on.” She leads Korra out of her cave and through the canyon.

“Think about what I’ve taught you about earthbending, and apply it to the other elements,” Toph says. “The longest-lasting effect of the Fire Nation War was that all the other bending styles lost some finesse. Think about it – in pro-bending, all the benders bend like firebenders.”

“I never thought about it like that,” Korra admits. “It just seemed… logical, I guess. Like that was the most straightforward type of bending.”

Toph snorts. “Bending’s not supposed to be straightforward. You need the strength of the earth, the power of fire, the agility of water, and the misdirection of air. Bending is more than just moving stuff around.”

“Tenzin kept trying to teach me that, I think,” Korra says. “He said I knew Korra-style airbending, but I didn’t get _real_ airbending.”

“Your airbending’s as real as Tenzin’s,” Toph comforts her. “It just sucks.”

“Gee, thanks, Sifu Toph,” Korra grumbles.

“Seriously, though, go talk to Bumi about it. Tenzin got Aang’s airbending, but Bumi got Aang’s… twinkle-toes.”

“Maybe,” Korra says, but she knows who she’ll go to about airbending. “What about water, though?”

“You’ll find someone. Try the swampbenders, maybe. Here we are.”

They’ve reached a rock.

It’s practically indistinguishable from all the other giant rocks that litter the canyon floor.

“Feel the vibrations of the earth,” Toph tells her. “You know the theory. Sound travels through air, vibrations travel through earth. Close your eyes, and listen to what the earth is telling you.”

Korra breathes in deeply, taps her toes, and pays attention to the soles of her feet.

“Anything?” Toph asks.

“It’s _hollow?_ ”

Toph places both palms on the rock and breathes in deeply. The rock starts to shift, opening up almost like a flower, almost like the metal terraces of Zaofu.

Inside, there are more stone petals, all circling around a flat platform.

“Come on, slowpoke,” Toph says, already halfway up to the platform. “Are we doing this spirit journey or not?”

Korra scrambles after her.

They sit facing each other, on the platform in the middle of the stone flower.

Inhale, and exhale.

Inhale, and exhale.

Inhale–

 

 

The sky is orange, and the stones beneath their feet are bright blue.

“The spirit realm is so weird,” Toph says.

“If you think that blue rocks are weird, you haven’t been here much,” Korra mutters.

Toph rolls her eyes. “No, not that. I can see, is all.”

Korra stares at her for a moment. Toph does look much younger – more like the statue in Republic City. The spirit realm did that to some people, Tenzin had told Korra once; it made them as they were in their… well, spirits.

Toph’s eyes are made out of stone, though, which is the really weird thing.

“Um,” Korra says. “Your eyes are rocks?”

Toph sighs. “Yeah, it’s a metaphor or something, you know how it is here. C’mon, let’s go find what we’re looking for.”

“We’re looking for Iroh, right?” Korra clarifies.

“… Yeah,” Toph says after a slightly worrying pause. “Things get sort of… weird in the Spirit Realm, you know, so–”

“Who know what we’ll find,” Korra says. “What’s that?”

There’s something off in the distance – a canyon, maybe.

They walk towards it. Eventually, the rocks stop having been blue, but the sky stays orange-brownish.

The Fog of Lost Souls stretches out below them.

“Oh,” Korra says eventually. “Well, that’s an… ominous start to this journey.”

“Well, at least we know roughly where we are.” Toph pauses. “Sort of.”

“Jinora got thrown in there,” Korra says softly. “Tenzin and Bumi and Kya went in to get her out, but Tenzin was the only one who was able to overcome it. He said that all of the fog is one big spirit.”

_That’s true enough._

Korra looks down at the fog – no, she looks across at the fog – _up_ at the fog–

She’s on the floor of the canyon, shrouded in fog.

“What do you want?” She demands.

She gets the impression that the fog is laughing at her.

 _Deep breath, Korra,_ she thinks to herself. _Calm down. Don’t… aggress the mind-stealing fog._

 _Oh, we’re not_ aggressed _,_ the fog replies. _We’re just… curious, I suppose. We’ve heard so much about the Avatar, but you’ve never come to visit! What can the great Bridge between Worlds see in our fog?_

“Sorry,” Korra says, “But you’re getting a discount avatar; it’ll just be the worst bits of my life, not the worst bits of history. I lost all the previous avatars.”

 _Did you,_ the fog replies, and then it begins.

She’s nowhere.

No, she’s not nowhere – she’s flying.

But she _can’t airbend_ , she can’t _airbend_ and Amon is going to win–

But she’s flying, she’s being airbent, airbended, _whatever,_ and _Zahir is holding her in the air._

It’s high up – too cold to firebend.

 _The time of the avatar is over,_ Zahir whispers.

There’s no water.

 _The world doesn’t need you any more,_ he tells her.

There’s no earth.

 _Everyone would be better off without you,_ he says.

Even Toph couldn’t teach her what to do when there’s no earth–

Is she down here too? Did she get caught in the–

 _Surrender, avatar, let your friends stop worrying,_ Zahir says.

–fog along with Korra? She needs to–

 _Leave the world behind_ –

–to rescue her, shut _up, Zahir, you’re WRONG._

 _Prove it,_ he taunts. _What can you do?_

 _This,_ she says, and reaches out to him like he did to Ozai–

–like he did to Yakone–

–like the turtle did to him–

–to _Aang_ –

 _Focus_ , says Avatar Aang

 _Fight,_ says Avatar Roku

 _Win,_ says Avatar Kyoshi

 _Good luck,_ says Avatar Wan, and Korra wakes up.

The Avatar wakes up.

 _You humans with your forgetfulness,_ the Fog whispers to her. _The avatar is the avatar, and you are you. Past lives are simply repressed memories._

“Why?” Korra asks the fog. “Why did you do this?”

 _The avatar is the bridge between worlds,_ the Fog says, curling around her but keeping its distance. _So many fewer humans come to… visit when the avatar is inactive. We get hungry._

“Well…” Korra can’t think of what to say. “Thank you,” she finally decides.

 _Goodbye, Avatar,_ the Fog says. _Feel free to keep mixing the worlds. It will be_ so _much fun._

Korra’s back at the top of the canyon. Toph is sitting cross-legged.

“Oh, good,” Toph says. “I was just starting to get a little worried.”

“Really?” Korra asks.

“No.” She stands and brushes herself off. “Did you have a nice stroll in the fog? Good. Let’s go find Iroh.”

“Thanks, Sifu Toph,” Korra mutters. “Love how much you care about me.”

“Shouldn’t you be proud she trusts you to take care of yourself?” Iroh asks her.

“I guess,” Korra says, brightening. “I – wait, Iroh?”

“Iroh?” Toph turns around and sees him, and breaks out into a giant grin. “Hey! How have you been?”

“I have been excellent,” Iroh reassures her. “And yourself?”

Toph shrugs. “Pretty good. Not much changes in the canyon. It’s relaxing.”

“I see you’ve brought me a student,” he says, turning to Korra. “How have you been? It has been a while since we spoke last.”

Korra looks down. “All right,” she says. “Better than I was a few weeks ago.”

“That is always good,” Iroh says. “Now, follow me – I’m assuming, of course, that you want some tea?”

 

 

“Fire is odd,” Iroh says. “A waterbender bends water. An earthbender bends earth. An airbender bends air. A firebender _creates_ fire.”

“Lord Zuko told me that the fire comes from our emotions,” Korra offers.

“Exactly.” Iroh beams. “But you also must remember what fire _is_ – fire is destruction, yes. Fire can raze civilizations to the ground, burn people to death, eradicate forests. Fire is impulse; it seeks to escape from the bender. In a way,” he says, handing her a cup of tea, “You are far more a fire person than you are a water person. But not entirely – water can be as unpredictable and violent as fire, in the right conditions.”

“I’m not unpredictable and violent,” Korra protests.

“But you have been in the past,” Iroh says. “Every person has all aspects of all the elements in them; some are more dominant than others, from person to person. But people change. That is something that you cannot forget.” He blows on his tea. “What was I saying? Ah. Fire. But what else is fire?”

Korra frowns, thinking. “Well… it burns things. And… heats them up?”

Iroh nods encouragingly.

“It can power airships,” she continues, “And cook food. Or tea.” She grins.

“Exactly,” he says. “Fire is destruction and impulse. But fire is also _life._ It keeps people alive in the cold, and allows them to eat well. It allows the advance of civilization. Remember that, Avatar Korra, and you will do well indeed.”

 

 

When Korra opens her eyes, Toph is gone.

There’s a small bundle where she was sitting, and Wan is tied up by the base of the giant stone flower.

She sits there for a while, staring at the sky, not moving.

Her past lives are back.

Well, not _fully_ back – there’s still an odd degree of separation. But they’re _there._

“Thank you,” she says – to the Fog, to Toph, to Iroh, hell, to the Great Divide – and goes to check what’s in the bundle.

There are the things Korra had brought with her to the Great Divide, two rocks, and three letters.

The letters are addressed to three different people – _Lin. Suyin. Opal._

One of the ‘rocks’ is a small chunk of metal – a bit of a meteorite, maybe.

The other rock is an obsidian arrowhead.

 _The fire rock,_ Toph had called it. _Strong, sharp as hell, but brittle – people used to make it into arrowheads just by hitting at it right. It’s hell to bend, since you have to get all the crystal lattices just right. It’s formed in volcanoes._

Korra climbs on Wan. ( _I don’t know whether I should be glad you named something after me or offended that you named an ostrich horse after me,_ Avatar Wan mutters in the back of her mind.)

She rides Wan to the edge of the canyon, but makes the climb up herself.

 _Wait,_ she thinks, once she reaches the top, and turns back to look out over the canyon one more time.

She takes out the meteorite that Toph gave her, and the obsidian arrowhead, and holds them in her hands.

_Metal is all about… not quite anger, but force of will._

_Fire comes from our emotions._

_And fire is also life._

She closes her eyes, centers herself. She is Avatar Korra. She is not alone.

She feels out for the metal, and _pushes_.

It bends.

Korra bends the metal into a necklace for herself, with the obsidian arrowhead as a pendant. This is her strength of will; this is her fire.

Then she opens her eyes, summons rocks from around her, and _bends._

The rocks bend with her – faster and faster, smoother and smoother, hotter and hotter.

She drops it and lets it cool, black stone against the red earth.

 _I can bend lava,_ she thinks. _But that doesn’t mean I have to._

Korra straightens up, one last time, and takes the arrowhead.

She’s been wearing her hair in one long ponytail, in the Earth Kingdom style. She grasps it by the tie and cuts straight across, shedding her past self in the style of the fire nation.

She has some elements to go relearn.

**Author's Note:**

> That glorious moment when you write a fic, post it, and then the trailer airs... and your fic _still sort of works._


End file.
